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A video interview from 2011 of a smart, cute, articulate Kurdish guy from near Maraş that’s a good primer, as it claims, on all the intricacies of the above.

Note the graphic at around 5:08: “Alevi = Alawite”. And then the interviewer pops the million-dollar question: “So, who are you loyal to? You’re an Alevi Kurd from Turkey. Where do your loyalties lie?” — that kind of nails the whole issue on the head. Because, not being the sharpest tool in the shed, he doesn’t realize that the Kurdish guy never even gives him an answer. Because there is none. Because the question betrays, again, the Westerner’s incapacity to understand that multiple identities can co-exist in not just one nation or one community, but in a single individual. And you can tell that the interviewer is getting bombarded with a complexity that he can’t even begin to make sense of — largely because he’s trying to make some sense of it in all the wrong ways.

Sad, prescient comment at the end concerning Syria: “It’s going to be a disaster.”

From Bosnia to Bengal – the purpose of this blog

I'm Nicholas Bakos, a.k.a. "NikoBako." I'm Greek (Roman really, but only a handful of people today fully understand what I'm talking about when I say that, so I use "Greek" for shorthand). I'm from New York. I live all over the place these days. The rest should become obvious from the blog.